Exploring Psychological Vaccination for Potentially Traumatized Children

Global population of forcibly displaced people has been reported to exceed 65 million in 2015 [1]. Although international community is highly aware of people who had passed the borders of their country and called as refugees, internally displaced people (IDP) are far more than refugees and not getting as much attention as refugees by the civilized world. As a consequence of collapsing of the Iraqi army against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), hundreds of thousands of people fled to Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) to escape being killed or become sex slaves. Children constitute major part of the survivors living in the camps or tents. Traumatic events are prevalent among child survivors of war [2,3]. Several studies show displaced children reporting high rates of exposure to severe traumatic events such as witnessing death or injury of someone and clashes or blasts [2-5]. Traumatic events and associated stress due to ongoing war and displacement may have severe adverse effects on psychosocial development of children [6] and lead emerging of depression, posttraumatic stress disorder and anxiety disorders [7,8]. High rates of other psychiatric symptoms than PTSD have also been showed among displaced children in numerous studies [4,9-11]. It is estimated that displaced children have a ten times higher risk for developing PTSD [12]. Previous studies also indicate that PTSD would emerge among 9 to 45 percent of refugee children [2,12]. Despite strong evidences that traumatic events increase psychiatric morbidity such as PTSD and initial distress might be far greater than PTSD, there is no effective way to protect children from developing PTSD after traumatic exposure [13].